Exploration of complexity, its indicators, embedded chaos, and value in human organizations.

THE UNHEARD SONG

I. An End to Games
Kohrek:
They had already committed to orbit when their argument focused on the most critical issue facing the planet. Kohrek adjusted her passenger restraints and looked at the young varok sitting erect in the adjoining seat--her colleague, Lok Antalorian, called Lokan. He was young, with a grand mind still exploring its potential, a nearly mature varok still a Callisto cycle away from graduation at the Concentrate. He had won a position as relief scientist to help address the crisis on the newly discovered planet Ellason--a wild place not yet fully understood. His dedication to the project was clear, but his ideals shone through, his words as raw and vulnerable as his person would be, too soon.

"We can win over the ellls, Kohrek, if we can find a way to communicate with them--I mean understand them on their terms--not ours. Surely the Directorate will not overrule this approach. Surely."

The fire in his eyes danced with urgency that his mentor, the aging varok Kohrek, found tragic. Usually, Lokan's young face stretched with laughter and sagged with disappointment, as if words of honest feeling would, at any moment, spill from his lips. She hated not to reassure him. "We haven't cracked the ellls' sonic code, and now we have evidence that they communicate with pressure signals on their body tiles. We'll be aliens with no way to communicate, Lokan."

"Aliens? What do you mean by aliens, Kohrek?" Lokan asked.

"Fearsome creatures from an unknown place beyond Ellason, a place they can't imagine, a place we can't describe--or won't, because they don't have a language within our sound range."

"Is that the lab's assumption? What about the electromagnetic signals from their tile lines. We understand the lateral lines on Earth's fish, don't we?"

"Ellason is not Earth, Lokan, and ellls are not fish."

"Bioluminescence? Chemicals?"

"Unlike everyone else in Ellason's oceans, ellls have none. They stay dark, and they don't indulge in chemical conversations. Both are probably a result of defensive selection."

"So we are aliens--beings they can't possibly understand? Is that what you imply?"

Kohrek loosened her restraints and tried a definition. Still a tiny ball of mist, Ellason had come into view, but the elder didn't want to interrupt the conversation to point it out. There would be better views later, but not a better chance to talk. "Aliens are something alive, and I agree that life knows life and may share some biochemistry, some basic needs like food and shelter, but--yes--life on Ellason may be so different we will never understand it. On Varok different languages cause different thought patterns, even among us varoks. The ellls may never understand us."

"So if we learn to understand each other, we will no longer be alien. Right? I claim there is no such thing as an alien. The word alien comes from a failure to recognize that every living being is a person, a conscious entity, no matter how they sense their environment or communicate between themselves."

"I like your idea," Kohrek said. "Treating every living being as a person could make a huge difference in how we treat the ellls." Here was the attitude varoks at the lab needed in order to make real progress.

The Legend of the First Loner
The epic poem telling the story of The Unheard Song--found in the reconstructed Library of Ellason, Ellason, circa 3705 ir. (Varokian Calendar) From an early Elllonian translation of the great-fish Epic Presentation

In days gone by, where days do not exist,
Beneath the deeps where varoks dare not range
And human search still fails,
Within the seas of Ellason
There lived an elll born strange.

She longed to chase the lohn birds through the moss,
To find the stars before the dawn's renewal,
To hear the sighing mists,
To see with mind and know with heart
The world beyond the school.

The school, the throbbing life-blood of her kind
Was wracked with pain, and not from her alone.
Oh Ellean, speak truth.
Is not your illness shared by all,
The ancient ways o'erthrown?

Though ellls were born to swim the warmest deeps,
She sought the misted rocks and shallows rife--
And valued solitude.
A mind apart, she longed to know
The deeps and mists of life.

Where Ellason's long tides creep into dark
She crossed dry land alone to fill her mind,
But failed among the rocks
Without the gentle throbbing press
Of signals from her kind.

When strangers come to worlds they do no know,
They act upon raw guesses made in haste.
Tho' all intent be good,
The world perceives nought but the wound,
And good intent's laid waste.

"Come, Ellean, the school throbs hollow now
"Without you here, where all our hearts reside.
"Your place cannot be filled."
She knew their pain and grieved for them,
But rode the loners' tide.

Where wave and terror mix too well with stone
She saw her life--joy gone and welcomed death,
Until a stranger came
To seek the heart of Ellason
And breathe its sweet sea-breath.

I thought I knew the depths of fear, until
I saw a strange new people throw away
The history of their race
To keep it out of alien reach,
Secure from sore display.

If in the mind's true bent an angle sharp
Distorts the straight line flowing toward the truth,
Then where can trust be found?
The line is spoiled; the dent is firm
'Til forged again in faith.

What horror now. To look in tortured eyes
And fail to stop the pain of those defiled,
To understand too late
That though communion is at hand,
They won't be reconciled.

Their fear made masks of faces raw with doubt.
Then gave them nerves of steel--a devil's gift
That stoked the fire of grief--
As into blood they plunged their hands
And set their souls adrift.

The tragedy of tragedies is this:
When good will, taken wrong, its good intent
Left broken on despair,
Turns full upon itself in flight,
Destroying all it meant.

From rot of time eternal shot with grief
I heard a cry of hope from alien tongue
That told me I was free.
"Just free?'" I cried. "What good is that?
"When all my life's unstrung?"

The gentlest of ellls, confined in time,
As one pure moment follows blind the next
By senses overdrawn,
Are soon o'ercome by moments' loss,
Their flooded souls perplexed.

When reason lost the battle for their minds,
And varoks desperate sent the ellls in flame
To horrors never meant,
They closed their minds upon themselves
To question not their aim.
"Though all your thoughts were centered here in mine,
"And I became more than I alone could be,
"I could not know your mind,
"Until we shared a grief that tore
"Open reality.

While ellls went mad with pain, and varoks then
Bound up their minds in rigid reason's girth,
Two youths, too keen with life
To let such horror rule their time,
Destroyed the set with mirth.